Wednesday, April 02, 2008

What To Do During Important Meetings

I listen carefully to what is being said and turn off my drawing/thinking brain and just let my subconscious mind doodle things I have been recently thinking about.

This way I'm not concerned about perfect construction or control. Instead I'm looking for mindless inspiration and lucky accidents.

The picture above is Rip pushing a bullet slowly into his arch enemy Citracett.

Here is an idea for a costume for Citracett's other identity, Stinky Butt.

The Ripping Friends have a fan club run by their number 1 fan, a crippled boy who can run on his crutches. Li'l Crip sometimes joins them on their dangerous missions.He has a secret decoder ring. The Ripping Friends communicate with him on the plasma screen in the middle of the ring. They give him secret orders. He must swear to uphold their secrets upon pain of being dunked in refried bacon grease.

I would never have consciously thought of that hand and finger shape. Luckily I was not really concentrating on what fingers are supposed to look like. I wrapped everything instead around the gag of the face in the ring.

The next time your boss or maybe your animation teacher is droning on about how Disney created personality animation, stare at him hard with one eye, and bend an ear toward him (Preferably your left eye and right ear).

Aim your other senses absent mindedly at a scribble pad and hope for some lucky uncensored inspirations. You might come up with some shapes you wouldn't think of while your more disciplined habit-ruled brain is guiding your pencil. Sometimes it's better to let your pencil drag your brain around.

26 comments:

Brings me back to my school days. The amount of time I spent doodling in the margins built up over the years and teachers took it as a sign I wasn't listening. Sometimes, that was true.Actually most of the time it was true.

I often find that I do sometimes come up with some intresting stuff when Im not tyring at all, but then I end up ruining it by "thinking" more about it later and making changes. it looked much better when it was still spontaneous, and usually I have no idea why. I mean, I change things that should only add to it in theory, but it ends up looking forced.

In high school I filled dozens of college-ruled filler-paper sheets with doodles. I did it to keep awake, but I found that doodling while I was listening actually helped me remember stuff. The doodles were linked to what was being taught at the time. Sometimes, on the test, I'd even remember the doodle that went with a particular answer. I'm not making this up!

I actually doodle to remember meetings. I can scan over a couple of pages of doodles quicker than reading a block of chicken scratch handwriting. Also I'll do a quick caricature of new people so I can better remember them.

I tend to come up with some interesting head and body shapes that way. Andrew Loomis could turn any arbitrary lumpy blob into a cartoon head with a distinct pose and expression. I try to employ a technique like that when turning a bulbous doodle into a cartoon.

Hi John,just dropping by to tell you a somewhat-bizarre fact: the guy who voiced Ren Hoek in the Brazilian dub is actually an EVANGELICAL PREACHER... you can check out his site (in Portuguese) in here: http://www.prmarcoribeiro.com

Cool doodles and funny ideas! I like the Ripping Friends, they really deserve a second coming.

Drawing with the other hand is also a way to extract some weird uncensored signals and creative impulses from your subconscious mind. When I injured my right hand last November, I was trying to draw for seven days with my left hand, and the results were surprising. Drawings lacked the precision, but they looked totally different from my regular stuff - there were always some weird funny shapes and ideas that I wouldn't normally draw. I'm still practicing it for 10 minutes daily, and use it as some kind of warm-up before the real drawing starts.